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"Carter, he always did what the other two did," says Casey. "Those were her orders: The Scotch should never be let go beneath the neck of the decanter. D.C. developer, businessman and philanthropist Calvin Cafritz, the eldest son of real estate icon Morris Cafritz and his wife Gwendolyn, died . At the heart of the lawsuit is a quest to gain at least partial control over the whole empire of which Gwendolyn's estate is an integral piece, over the whole legacy that Morris Cafritz created. He died on Thursday, Jan. 12, at age 91. We welcome you to provide your thoughts and memories on our Tribute Wall. According to Susan Boerstling, GWs assistant vice president for corporate and foundation relations, the partnership of the Cafritz Foundation with GW is unique in terms of other universities in the area. The annual Cafritz Awards Gala has been held on campus for many years, Boerstling noted, representing a partnership between the university, the foundation and the Office of the D.C. Mayor. "He's part of a legendary family, and he's the only one who seems interested in keeping up the legend," says one friend. Named in the lawsuit, besides Calvin, is everyone to whom Gwendolyn Cafritz made a bequest, including her former servants and grandchildren, two nephews and an old escort. The family observed Jewish holidays, and the sons attended religious school at Washington Hebrew Congregation on weekends. . Mr. Funeral arrangement under the care ofSAGEL BLOOMFIELD DANZANSKY GOLDBERG FUNERAL CARE INC. The entire time, he fought with gloves off, publicly charging his rivals with bad faith. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. Calvins father Morris built the now-demolished Ambassador Hotel at 14. and K Streets NW, homes next to the National Arboretum, the Greenwich Forest neighborhood in Bethesda and several office buildings downtown. "She was good to me, and she was a good woman in my eyes," he says. Information and advice to help you cope with the death of someone important to you. There is no photo or video of Calvin Cafritz.Be the first to share a memory to pay tribute. A document filed in probate court says an initial inventory of her own property exceeded $90 million; however, inventories filed with her will account only for a little more than $80 million. Implicitly, Carter and Conrad Cafritz are also challenging her designation of Calvin, the eldest, as the only son who will have a future role in running the foundation, which already controls assets of more than $220 million. He may sometimes have yearned for recognition: One night, after one of the glamorous dinners, he drew a friend of Gwendolyn's away from the dining room and into the kitchen. Once it was built, he wasn't interested in it.". It is not clear how old he was when he fell for a 19-year-old Hungarian-American beauty named Gwendolyn Detre de Surany; perhaps because she was so much younger than he, Cafritz appears to have habitually understated his age by six or eight years. Her husband, along with her parents, was buried in Washington Hebrew Cemetery, in Southeast, in a nicely landscaped, square plot designed for four under a monumental headstone reading CAFRITZ. The foundation's board of trustees consisted of Gwendolyn Cafritz and the two men who would become her executors -- Atlas and William P. Rogers, her attorney. He was elected to the Board of Directors of the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation in December 1988 and since February 1989 had served as Board Chairman. His father, one of Washington's leading commercial and residential builders from the early 1920's to the 1960's, distinguished himself as an outstanding civic leader known for generosity. Calvin Cafritz Obituary It is with deep sorrow that we announce the death of Calvin Cafritz (Rockville, Maryland), who passed away on January 12, 2023, at the age of 91, leaving to mourn family and friends. This time, the receiving line snaked across the long, low living room to the far wall, where the hostess was displayed in a yellow silk armchair. Cafritzs encouragement has particularly strengthened the Washington-area communitys appreciation of textiles as a vital form of artistic expression and global cultural heritage.". The strange paradox of her marriage was that Morris's money enabled her to carry out her lavish social dreams, while the family's being Jewish also placed limits on her chances of realizing them. Between 1925 and 1941, Cafritz built more than 85 apartment houses, including 15 large luxury buildings, such as the Majestic and the Hightowers on 16th Street NW and the Westchester on Cathedral Avenue NW. Cafritz is survived by his third wife, Jane Lipton Cafritz, a Washington lawyer whom he married in 2000; his three children; three stepchildren (including Olivia Rubenstein, who earned a masters degree from GSEHD in 2018); and numerous grandchildren and step-grandchildren, as well as his brother, Conrad Cafritz, chairman and CEO of Cafritz Interests. Food has always been a go-to for people in mourning. a medically-induced . His faith was great enough to lead him into investments that would later seem visionary: He developed the Temple Heights tract at Connecticut and Florida, for example, buying the land in 1945 with developer Charles H. Tompkins and sitting on it for 12 years before selling the northern part for development of the Washington Hilton, and building the two Universal Buildings on the southern part of the site. Distinguished D.C. Government Employees Recognized at Cafritz Awards Gala, Office of Communications & Marketing It is also different from proving that a respected lawyer and former Cabinet member, in league with a longtime family associate, unfairly loaded the dice. But almost no one seems to doubt that Conrad is the main force behind it. There is still a sign directing deliveries to the back of the house, as if tradesmen were still streaming up to the front door to importune the lady of the house, and Ridgewell's were due at any moment with more shrimp and cocktail sauce. The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation is already, with its more than $220 million in assets, the largest source of private funds earmarked for the District of Columbia. Marvin Katz was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma to Dr. Donald LaVerne Katz and Lila Maxine Katz on December 12, 1935. "With so-called friends all around her, she was a very lonely woman," says Dowling. Even her friends laughed at the way she would seat herself intently in the lobby of the Paris Hotel in Monte Carlo, at a table "very strategically placed," in the words of one, to court the passing society. The control of so much money, especially in a city with limited corporate philanthropy, brings enormous power. The George Washington University community is remembering the life of Calvin Cafritz, a businessman, philanthropist and longtime supporter of GW. For the sons of Gwendolyn Cafritz, to accept her last will and testament would be to allow her, in more than one sense, the last word. When Morris Cafritz died in 1964, his estate was worth $66 million, mostly in the form of stock in dozens of closely held corporations he had established to manage his real estate. To Martin Atlas, she left $50,000 and a Chagall painting. There were of course the grand exceptions like the Warburgs, and Walter Lippmann, and Arthur Krock . His most notable contribution was in the streamlined art deco apartment houses designed, either singly or together, by architects Alvin L. Aubinoe and Harry L. Edwards, including the Majestic, the Hightowers, the Empire and the since-demolished Gwenwood on 19th Street NW. Jane Lipton Cafritz was elected in the second half of 2022 to succeed her husband as the foundations president and CEO. With support from the Cafritz Foundation, the Center for Excellence in Public Leadership hosts a yearly awards gala to honor D.C. government employees who demonstrate outstanding public service. If youre in charge of handling the affairs for a recently deceased loved one, this guide offers a helpful checklist. The foundation, among Greater Washingtons largest with more than $400 million in assets and some $65 million in annual revenue and expenses, according to its most recent Form 990, is expected to issue a formal statement in the coming days. By 1967, records show a sprinkling of grants to highbrow cultural causes: the Committee to Rescue Italian Art, the Opera Society of Washington, the Corcoran Gallery. Then there is the charitable legacy. He was 91. All are multimillionaires, and Conrad Cafritz, by most accounts the prime instigator of the lawsuit, has spun his inheritance from his father into a vast personal fortune of at minimum $100 million. And {Gwendolyn} was just considered comical, and there were a lot of jokes about her. He had emigrated from Russia as a boy with his family, which stopped briefly in New York before settling down to run a grocery store at 24th and P streets NW. Dean Liesl Riddle of the GW College of Professional Studies (CPS), where GW CEPL has been housed since 2005, said, Our college was launched to make an economic and social impact through innovative professional programs that cultivate talent for employers and propel students careers forward. Only between the lines or in conversations with old friends can one make out how nakedly she wore her ambitions, and how hard she was working to measure up. It is hard not to wonder what the effect might have been of hearing Gwendolyn Cafritz's will read for the first time. "I think he went along," says a longtime business associate, Irwin Altman. No one needed to be told that this was Gwendolyn Cafritz's last hurrah. For better or worse, he is the son who has tried to live out both their ambitions -- to build on a scale that will make an impact on the city, and to develop a persona that will make him an actor in the capital. In the past two decades Washington has been one of the hottest real estate markets in the country, building new fortunes, multiplying old ones, constantly attracting new players from other cities. The suit was filed by the middle and youngest Cafritz sons, Carter, 53, and Conrad, 51. A unique and lasting tribute for a loved one. They charge in their suit that Rogers and Atlas influenced her to leave all the property she controlled to the foundation. "He got up at 5 or 5:30, and he wanted to show me what a hard-working man he was.". Conrad is angrily aware, say friends, that his success will always be explained away. Their complaint challenges her wish to leave all she owned, except for minor bequests, to the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, a charitable trust her husband had established 40 years before. Of the three sons, Calvin seems to have had the best relationship with his mother. Mr. Cafritz was married previously two times; his first wife was Enid Cafritz and his second wife was Joyce Smith. But he's much different from his father, in a lot of ways. January 16, 2023, 1:16 AM D.C. developer, businessman and philanthropist Calvin Cafritz, the eldest son of real estate icon Morris Cafritz and his wife Gwendolyn, died Thursday at Sibley Memorial Hospital. Some basic help and starters when you have to write a tribute to someone you love. For one thing, he has a dark, avowedly cynical sense of humor. The outcome of the lawsuit is unpredictable, though clearly it will be an uphill fight: Showing that someone was alcoholic is very different from demonstrating that she was incapable of writing a will. But public records show that, like any organization privately controlled by a very small number of people, it is very susceptible to change by a determined leader. The majority of this property was already owned by the Cafritz Foundation, but Gwendolyn was partial owner of many of the buildings; even a limited power to control their disposition would presumably attract men with ambitions in Washington real estate. "There were moments when you wanted to go around and have everybody wear not just a name tag, but a bio,"says their good friend Margaret Lenzner. "Getting along with her," says one developer who knows the family, "was something none of them ever mastered. And it is over the foundation, established to memorialize the name and works of the Cafritz family, that the Cafritz family is now at war. "That what she wanted was pointless is not for us to judge.". 2000 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Comment * document.getElementById("comment").setAttribute( "id", "a33c63ad631098ddb002d9da023fc09f" );document.getElementById("gab125c3ec").setAttribute( "id", "comment" ); Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. "Decedent's condition deteriorated after the death of her husband in 1964 and grew worse in the following years. Their differences were, in fact, a part of their legend, for they were one of the earliest families to bring together the two cities on the Potomac: On the one hand was the ethereal world of social and political Washington -- her world, which venerated either good birth or a seat in the Senate; on the other hand was his world, the corporeal city of sewers and streets and buildings and real citizens, men and women who grew up above grocery stores the way Morris Cafritz had. Aubinoe and Edwards also designed the Cafritzes' dramatic house on Foxhall Road. He will always be remembered and loved by our team and the thousands of people whose lives he touched for his humility, kindness and willingness to go above and beyond in service of our great city and community.. That's why her final victory rather delighted me. Calvin Cafritz, D.C. developer and head of the Cafritz Foundation, dies at 91. bizjournals.com - Michael Neibauer 20h.